Why should we return to “The Family Question”? by Chris Kortright The Family is a moral and ideological unit that appears, not universally, but in particular social orders. — Jane Collier, Michelle Z. Rosaldo, Sylvia Yanagisako1 The State and the Church approve of no other ideal, simply be- cause it is the one that necessitates the State and Church control of men and women. — Emma Goldman2 A return to The Family The struggle over the normative/moral value of “The Family” has been central to the anarchist movement from its inception. Large portions of the anarchist move- ment have struggled for gender and queer liberation as well as the abolition of the nuclear family, marriage, mo- nogamy, and the age of consent. For many anarchists, the struggle for a better world is aimed at the personal as much as the social. Because we are struggling to live in a world where people have active power and not alienated power, all social relations that produce alienated power are in question for anarchists. Questions around the in- stitution of The Family and marriage has run through most anarchist currents from anarchist communism to egoism. Individualist anarchist such as Benjamin Tucker, anarchist communists like Emma Goldman and Errico Malatesta and anarcho-syndicalists like Lucy Parsons as well as Voltairine de Cleyre who advocated for an “an- ix archism without adjectives” all engaged in debates over marriage, the family, free love and child rearing. Journals and newspapers such as (but not limited to): The Alarm, Clothed with the Sun, Egoism, The Firebrand, The Kansas Lib- eral, Liberty, Lucifer: the Light-Bearer, Mother Earth, Regen- eración, Social Revolutionist and Twentieth Century carried long standing discussions over the question of an anar- chist position on the family. These discussions covered an enormous range of questions regarding marriage, aboli- tion of marriage, children and divorce, the importance and structure of the home, sexual abuse in the family, The State’s interference with the family, as well as motherhood not only addressed the family in the context of the present society, but also the future societies anarchists were strug- gling for. Discussions, in anarchist circles, of “The Fam- ily” (and of families) have not been as active as they have been in the past. The institution of marriage does not hold the same legal status as it did in the late 19th cen- tury when anarchists were challenging the “slavery” of women. Also, divorce and separation is now more nor- malized removing some of its stigma. Same-sex marriag- es are legal in many places and becoming more accepted. But I would argue, it is still a topic that anarchists should think through and take seriously. Partially we need to think through possibilities, practices and formations that we desire as anarchists which strengthen and create lib- eratory social relations. We also need to still take note of the institution because of its moral/ideological power as well as its continuing relationship with The State. Wil- helm Reich argued that the patriarchal family is a central location for the production/reproduction of authoritar- ian political power (and the rise of fascism).3 As we see a rise in authoritarian politics in the US and Canada, we see calls and demands for reestablishing “traditional values” x and morality. These calls come equally from politicians and those in political power as well as from those in the patriot movement, white nationalists, the men’s move- ment, religious fundamentalists (of all faiths) and anti- immigrant groups. For all of these groups, reestablishing institutions of authority start with The Family as a moral unit of purity. The Family still matters. So if it matters, what is “the family” I am talking about? The Family When a person speaks of “family,” there are two - tions of an individual understood as “my family.” This is my relationship to my parents, siblings, children, grand- parents, aunts and uncles, and partner(s). The second is a cultural unit, or institution, that mediates the proper or normative structure of social relations in the personal relations of “my family.” Part of the power of the The State is the ability to produce the cultural unit called “the modern family” which is understood to be universal. I am interested in the second, institutional, set of relations how individuals and communities organize “their fami- lies.” In other words, I’m interested in the institution of The Family because of its power to produce normative/ moral forms of social relations that are thought to be more set of social relations. The family has been, and continues to be, an important location of control over the organization of culture, intimacy, child rearing, property relations, and sexual relations to mention just a few. “The modern fam- ily” as a normative/moral unit in US and Canada, as well as much of Europe (and many of Europe’s former colo- nies), is comprised of the relations of a male and female xi (parents) and their children. With industrialization in the 19th century, “the modern family” was organized with the male as the breadwinner and the female as the home- maker who were in a monogamous relationship. This unit can be in a relationship to the parents and siblings of the male and female parents. This is the normative/moral unit of organization; in the lived lives of most families, the female parent needed or chose to work. In the recent past, there has been a semi-successful struggle to open this normative/moral unit allowing breadwinners to be both male and female. Today the struggle for same-sex marriage is generally a struggle to be accepted into the normative/moral constitution of “the modern family” with all the legal “rights” and “responsibilities.” The Family as a “civilizing” tool The State has used The Family as a weapon to the present settler-states of the US and Canada, The State disrupted many matrilineal and extended kinship sys- tems through treaty rights and land titles that were only available through or to male heads of nuclear family units. Kim TallBear argues “So marriage was yoked together with private property in settler coercions of Indigenous peoples. The breakup of Indigenous peoples’ collectively held-lands into privately-held allotments controlled by men as heads-of-households” as she illustrates and decon- structs the relationship between settler colonialism, the nucular family and compulsory monogamy.4 The nuclear family as a normative/moral unit was seen as a “civiliz- ing” tool. This was followed by Residential and Boarding Schools that sought to break Indigenous traditions and struggles by destroying the kinship systems and family structures while “killing the Indian within the child.” In Canada when this did not work, Indigenous children were taken from their families by The State and placed in foster xii and adoptive homes in what is now known as the Sixties - cies such that there are more Aboriginal, First Nations and Métis children in the custody of The State than during the height of the Residential Schools. During Reconstruction after the US Civil War, the Freedman’s Bureau promoted the morality of monoga- mous marriage and the nuclear family among former slaves. Because of the political and economic structures of slavery (i.e. slaves were property and could not create a legal family), many slaves engaged in serial cohabitation, marriages. The nuclear family as a normative/moral unit was seen, again, as a central tool for “civilizing.” All forms of polyamory—be it polygamy, polyandry and group or conjoint marriage—were, and still are, seen as deviant and less “civilized.” The Republican Party platform of 1856 tied together polygamy with slavery as the “twin relics of barbarism.” Laws were not only established against how many people could constitute a family, but who could constitute a family. Same-sex individuals could Anti-miscegenation laws were an important part of the US race relations both legally and socially. Anti-miscege- nation laws banned the marriage of white individuals to non-white individuals—primarily African-Americans, Native Americans and Asian-Americans. Although anti- miscegenation laws ended in 1967 with Loving v. Virginia, the social and cultural stigma of multi-racial relations continues into present day. Other ways to see a family So what does it mean to have an autonomist or free family; what is the ideal or mixed family unit of the future; and how will children live under anarchy? In the struggle for a new world, the creation of non-alienated xiii personal and social relations is as important as creating new economic relations. I am arguing for families as a liberatory and experimental space. Here, I mean “fami- lies” with a small “f,” not “The Family” as the norma- tive/moral unit. In other words, I am arguing that the understanding of families needs to be open to a diversity of possibilities. I am not saying that there should not be families that are structured in a nuclear family (male/fe- male and their children), but I am arguing that it should not be the measure by which the family—normative/ moral unit—is understood. In Families We Choose, Kath Weston argues for the importance of a “more compre- hensive attack on the privilege accorded to a biogeneti- cally grounded mode of determining what relationships will count as kinship.”5 The structure and organization of families must be opened up to satisfy the needs of those living in these families. There is no reason that two moth- ers (in a sexual or non-sexual relationship) co-parenting children are not a family, but that is a simple move from the normative unit we have today.